Blog About Nothing

Hey everyone.

Nothing much of noteworthiness going on these days, but I thought I should drop a line anyway, just to let you all know I'm still around.

Things have been busy, but not so busy that life has gotten out of hand. Mostly, though, life this last week has been a series of mishaps followed by work to correct them.

For those who don't know, my laptop crapped out on me. I'd been having troubles with the power cable, and the day that a new one arrived, Windows stopped working. Once I got Windows reinstalled, all of my installed programs were missing. Most of them still are, but I'm really trying not to worry about that too much at the moment. But that whole process ate up a whole day right there.

Skye and I have been working on getting electricity to the yurt this week. We've run into some problems there too, which then led to problems with power here at the house as well, but I think we've gotten them pretty well ironed out, and while the power to the house is working great now, I think we'll also have the power to the yurt up and going in a few days.

The weather has still not been incredibly cooperative, with rain every day. At least now we typically have at least a clear afternoon or morning (of course I say that as today has been cloudy and rainy all day long), but everyone keeps telling me that the big break in the weather should happen in the next couple of weeks. Everyone also keeps telling me that even in the typical rainy seasons it doesn't rain this much. When I first got here, everyone I met would ask "How do you like all of this rain?" and I'd always say that I really enjoyed it, because it just doesn't rain like this in Colorado. Last week, Linda across the street asked me if I still liked the rain. I told here that I do really still like the rain, but I'm starting to think that it doesn't like me. :)

On the upside of things, the work on the yurt has been going pretty well. We've got the painting all done (other than the ceiling and floor in the control room. The soundproofing in there is working really well, and with a few more added items where the ceiling meets the yurt, I think it's going to work great. We've moved in some furniture already, as well as the drum kit and the guitars. Kaleo gets home on Thursday, and will be here for over a week (11 days, if memory serves) so I'll be officially moving in to the yurt on that day, whatever shape it's in (I'm betting "round"). And for those of you that are curious, yes, I'll be adding more photos once all of the trim and furniture and everything is in.

Speaking of photos, Skye and Kaleo have started really encouraging me to make some large prints of some of my photos that I've taken, and to display them for sale at a local restaurant. While I know that I like my photos, and I know that my friends usually have nice things to say about them, I've got no faith that they'll sell. But as the upfront cost is not that much, and as it's not going to take very much time to get it all together and set up, I think I'm going to give it a shot. With a little luck, I'm hoping that I can make enough money to at least buy a new camera, so I can have even more flexibility in the photos I take. I'll keep you all posted on that one.

Well, that's about it from Hilo.

I hope all is well in your parts of the world.

OOooo I almost forgot.
HAWAI'IAN WORD OF THE DAY:
Koneko (koh-nay-koh): donut. (I can't believe I haven't done this one yet)

As a side note, thanks much to Jo for asking for the pronunciation for the words. I was thinking that myself after the last one of these, and with her confirmation of the idea, I think it's best. For the record, though, if you'd like to know how to pronounce the previous words, it's pretty simple. The consonants are usually pronounced the same way as in English. As far as I can tell, there's no such thing as a "silent" letter. W's are usually pronounced as an English V, but it's acceptable to use the W sounds as well. Each vowel is pronounced the same way in every word. A is "ah", like in draw. E is "ay", as in play or grey. I is "ee" like in see. O is "oh", like in grow. And U is "oo", like in food. Sometimes, though, the vowels kinda seem to blend together a bit when pronounced next to each other. For example, a previous Word of the Day, "Kaiwiki." It's pronounced kaee-vee-kee and the kaee ends up usually rhyming with "guy" or "sky." From what I've been told and been able to figure out, this kind of sound mixing with the vowels does happen, but it's not that big a deal, since the word "kai" means salt water, and it's one word. If it was two words, that needed to be distinct, then it would be spelled "ka'i" where the apostrophe is a gap between the vowel sounds, thus pronounced "ka ee" with a clear space between the A and the EE.

That's what I've been able to figure out. I'm sure if I'm wrong, someone here will read this and correct me.

Ok... that's it for your lessons today. There will be a pop quiz later in the week (maybe).